


The Take-Down

by the_wordbutler



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: (sort of), Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-18
Updated: 2012-08-18
Packaged: 2017-11-12 09:43:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/489483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_wordbutler/pseuds/the_wordbutler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Clint makes a different call.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Take-Down

It’s supposed to be just a simple take-down.

Clint reads the dossier on the train. It’s inserted between pages 254 and 255 of the newest Stephen King, not that he can read it. The book, except for the dossier, is in Turkish. Turkish is one of those languages he’s never quite wrapped his head around, that and anything using the Cyrillic alphabet, but he’s got to blend in somehow. The dossier’s long, pages and pages about everything the target’s done for the last, oh, ten years or so. They’re usually not this thorough, and he’s lulled into the comfortable rhythm of the train on the tracks and lengthy narratives about murders in North Korea.

It’s a two-day mission. Most of the take-downs are, ‘cause not even the best agents can trail a target’s movements, hunt out a nest, and spring the trap all in one go. It means Clint ditches his go-bag at the hotel, tucks a pistol into his waistband, and sets off into the market. He looks a little out-of-place in his jeans, sneakers, and _I Love New York_ t-shirt, but he snatches a map from a newsstand when nobody’s watching, hangs a cheap plastic 35mm camera around his neck, and bingo: instant tourist. The crowd moves around him, thrumming like the heart of one giant body, and he pretends that he’s scoping out attractions.

Not following someone through the throng.

That’s how it goes, more or less, for the whole day: wandering through the market, bumping into people and apologizing in English, pretending to haggle over a wicker basket, watching a snake-charmer with an obviously plastic snake—and all while the target’s in the corner of his eye. He thinks two, three times that he’s been spotted and almost bolts, but then the target stops at a booth and laughs with the attendant, and everything starts moving again.

Once, when he’s “struggling” to fold up his map, he swears the target smiles directly at him.

It’s hard to unnerve Clint, but—yeah, that’s a little unnerving.

But the day doesn’t stop being weird at the unnerving maybe-smile. Trails usually get pretty boring after half an hour, but this one . . . This one’s kinda different. There’s no sitting in the café across the street while the target eats lunch, or pretending to read the newspaper in the lobby of the hotel where the target’s staying. This one keeps moving the whole day long.

And not just moving, either. Clint drops and breaks a wooden sculpture he’s fake-browsing when the target palms a couple of pastries off a cart and hands them to the beggar kid who’s been hanging out in the alley all day. Dozens of lira fall from the target’s sleeve, pay buskers and street-performers for jobs well (or not-so-well) done. When a couple drunks get into a brawl outside a restaurant, they’re peeled apart by a stranger they never saw coming—and the target lays them out on the street before the cops round the corner.

Clint’s never seen someone move like that before. It’s enough that he forgets to follow for the first couple seconds after, just ‘cause he’s that impressed. 

But he’s there to do a job. He leaves the message at the target’s hotel, scopes out an eighth-story nest and a place he can squirrel his bow away. When he gets back to his room, it’s sweltering, and he lays on top the sheets and tries to sleep.

Problem is, he’s thinking about that round-house kick in the street that afternoon instead.

The trap’s set for early, and Clint rolls out of bed at four a.m. coated in sweat but without having slept. He suits up—dark jeans, dark shirt, jacket, gloves, the whole lot of it—and slips down the back stairwell. The streets are empty, silent, and it’s easy to head back to his nest. It’s in a run-down district, and there’re old, abandoned warehouses far as the eye can see. Not a cop, a security guard, or even a drifter in sight.

No, the only sound’s his footfalls on the steps up to the eighth floor, and then the whisper of his bow unfolding. He leans against the wall opposite the window, and he waits.

The target’s a couple minutes early, wearing the same thing as the day before, loose fabric that catches on the breeze. The sun’s just coming up, lending a little extra light, and Clint spends the first couple minutes just watching. The message was about a mercenary mission, a quick in-and-out somewhere extra-hostile. This target’s specialty—or at least, it used to be.

He pushes himself away from the wall and settles in front of the window. It’s a perfect shot, one he can line up in seconds. The target stretches, twisting at the waist and—

“For the record, I know you’re there.”

And Clint’s aim wavers.

His aim never wavers, but it does this time, jumps a half-inch. He straightens out the shot, narrows his eyes. No way the target sees him, not when there’re this many dark, empty buildings around. So how—

“Credit where credit’s due,” the target continues, wandering a few feet along the dusty, cracked road, “you do ‘confused tourist’ pretty well. You’re just a little too American.”

For a second, Clint can’t think. He’d stopped counting kills a long time ago—“Best way to break yourself,” his handler’d said, “is to start counting”—but he’s never had a target talk to him. Beg, sure. Swear to come back and kill everyone he’s ever loved, promised he’d be sorry, went on some James Bond rant about how it’d only make the organization stronger, yeah. That was all par for the course.

This is a—conversation.

“If I had to guess,” the target continues, “I’d say high-powered rifle. Something you can’t get, even on the black market. I’ll be dead before I hit the ground.” Clint watches the shrug from eight stories up. “Well, you should probably get it over with. You’ve really only got the one shot.”

Clint swallows. His fingers curl a little tighter around the bow, draw back the string with perfect precision. He’s stopped counting, but he’s never stopped feeling the half-second of hesitation when his fingers graze his cheek. It’s like praying, not that he’s prayed much in the recent past. It’s that breath before the _amen._

His fingers twitch, and he lets go.

The arrow flies, as straight and true as every arrow he’s ever loosed on a mission, almost laser-guided in its precision. The breeze nudges it the exact measure he was counting on, and it hits its mark: 

A dusty crack in the broken road, exactly one half-inch from the target’s left foot.

The target’s head rises. Clint expects it, and lowers his bow. Eight stories up in the just-breaking dawn, he can feel those eyes on him. “You missed.”

“Or I didn’t.” His voice echoes between the buildings, sounds louder than the target’s.

“Looks like a miss to me.”

“Most things aren’t what they look like,” and then Clint steps away from the window.

He takes his time folding up his bow, packing it and the couple extra arrows away. He pockets the standard-issue detonator he’s supposed to use when things go wrong—when in doubt, blow shit up, right?—and snaps the safety back on his pistol. The more there’s sunlight, the more there’s heat, and by the time he gets down to the street, he’s got his jacket open and his gloves shoved in his pockets.

The target’s leaning against the wall outside the back stairwell. There’s no eye contact, just Clint’s arrow dangling from long fingers. “Didn’t see this coming.”

“I like an element of surprise,” Clint replies with a shrug. He reaches for the arrow, but the target tugs it away at the last second. Fingers dance around the shaft, twirl it like a majorette’s baton.

He considers smiling, but—

“How much trouble are you going to be in for not killing me?” the target asks.

“I didn’t not-kill you,” Clint replies. “I made a call.”

“Still doesn’t answer the question.”

“The answer kinda depends.”

“On?”

“On whether you’ll come in with me.”

The arrow stills. “Come in?”

The target’s got these—calm eyes. Clint’d noticed it on the street, after the fight with the drunks, but now he’s close enough to really take them in. Most people can’t look the guy who almost killed them straight in the eye. The ones who can are always panicked, ready to wet themselves and run.

It’s just another day at the office for this one.

“My organization looks for people like you,” Clint explains. “Extraordinary people, I think’s the saying. People with—special skills.”

The target’s eyebrows rise. “And you think they’d want me?”

“I think I can make that argument, sure.”

“And if you can’t?”

“Then you’re about where you are right now.”

There’s this second, this perfect beat, where those calm eyes falter. They turn into doe eyes, to fight-or-flight eyes, and Clint knows he’s got a breath, maybe two, before he’s got to act. If the target runs, that’ll be easy—he’s got the pistol—and even though he’s probably slower, he’s wider and stronger, which’ll help for hand-to-hand.

He takes his one breath. Lets it out.

And when he inhales the second time, the target asks, “Who do I say recruited me, then?”

“Hawkeye,” he answers. It comes a little too fast, but Clint figures honesty’s the best policy, right about now. After all, if anything happens in the next ten seconds, the target ought to know who killed him.

Instead, the target nods. “In that case, I’m Phil.”

And maybe it’s not the way to start this, not when he’s still gotta come up with the story for Agent Romanoff, but damn if Clint doesn’t laugh at that. “Okay, first thing? We’ve gotta come up with something a lot better than _Phil_.”


End file.
